Grab the razor in the balance point, tilt your head left and place razor on the right chin. This is a reference for 'no pressure' ATG.
You can lie on a bed and hang you head down towards the floor and place razor by holding in balance point on your neck. This will give you a reference for no pressure on the neck.
No pressure is less than you would think, if in doubt use less pressure!
BTW: welcome to the B&B!
Honestly, I'm of the opinion you should never use the razor's weight to control pressure.
If you hold the razor at the point of balance you are in effect reducing its weight to very little.
All in all I think we mean the same thing!
I never thought of it this way but this is really sage advice. I'm fond of using the balloon analogy. Use the level of control that you'd use if you were trying to shave a balloon.Yep, we're saying the same thing. The idea is to remove the weight of the razor from the equation, and just keep the blade riding pressure free at skin level. Now I do still prefer heavier razors, as the mass also gives more momentum to motions in the direction of cutting, which is nice. But I never let those forces work perpendicular to the skin.
About 2 weeks into DE shaving I gave up on atg and finally achieved burn free shaves. At some point, guess I learned technique and pressure w/o overthinking the process. Now I do a final pain free atg cleanup in certain spots, but it wasn't a conscious effort...just came naturally with experience.
Maybe muscle memory kicks in after a while, making all this easier?
Well, I used all the good advice this morning, paying more attention to how I was holding the razor and more conscious of how much pressure was applied (hopefully none). I had a Feather blade, on it's 2nd shave, in my EJ DE89 and ended up with a very descent shave with no razor burn!